No hype: East Carolina presents ODU's biggest challenge

NORFOLK — Bobby Wilder knew better than to go full Lou Holtz and talk up East Carolina as the greatest football team he's ever seen. Still, it's a matter of perspective for Old Dominion's coach as he prepares his team for its greatest challenge yet.

Wilder looks at East Carolina and sees an established Football Bowl Subdivision program with seasoned, productive FBS players and bowl game experience. The Monarchs possess none of those qualities, heading into Saturday night's opener in Greenville, N.C.

"If you're somebody who's an established FBS program, you'd look at them and say, this is a really good football team," Wilder said Monday. "If you're us, who's an FCS program transitioning up to FBS and you look at them from our standpoint, you say this is a great football team. This is a team that we're going to have to do everything right to be able to stay in the football game."

Of the 70 players ODU plans to take to Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium, 34 have never played a down of football for the Monarchs. Twenty-six arrived on campus since last January.

Seventeen players listed on the game-week depth chart are freshmen or redshirt freshmen, among them projected starters Richie Staton from Phoebus at middle linebacker, and Melvin Vaughn from Chesapeake at wide receiver.

"To say that we're inexperienced going into this game would be an understatement," Wilder said.

The Monarchs' first game against an FBS opponent also presents the most hostile setting they've faced. ECU expects a crowd of 50,000, more than twice as many people as last year's game at James Madison.

"I've told them from the first day we reported to camp that we're going to need to embrace this environment," Wilder said. "We're going to need to go down there and have fun, because we really don't have anything to lose. We're clearly massive underdogs in this game, so to get them to embrace the environment. That'll be my challenge this week."

Wilder repeated the line that the start of this season reminds him of the Monarchs' first after resurrecting the program in 2009. ODU will be competitive, if not dominant, in its seven games versus FCS opponents. The five against FBS teams, starting with ECU and Maryland? No idea.

"Our guys are curious right now," Wilder said. "What are we going to look like Saturday night when we take the field? There's a lot of curiosity. The players are getting asked by friends, by family members, by media, by folks on campus: How do you think you'll do Saturday night? There's a big question mark that's out there by everybody right now."

The Monarchs return nine starters on offense, including record-setting quarterback Taylor Heinicke, from the team that led FCS in scoring, passing and total offense. But they brought in a new defensive coordinator, Rich Nagy, to overhaul a group that was 79th against the pass, 89th in scoring and 94th in total defense.

ODU clearly is more talented on defense than last season, but no one knows how long it will take for a group with five new starters and several others who have changed positions to jell, or even when it does, how it will fare against higher-level competition.

"I don't think I'm overstating this: We're clearly overmatched in this game in all three phases and we'll need to get some help from East Carolina to stay in this game," Wilder said. "We're going to have to play as close to perfect as we can, from our standpoint. But you never know what happens. We'll roll the ball out at 7:05 and see."

Old Dominion and football coach Bobby Wilder agreed to a new five-year contract this week that will bring his compensation in line with the rest of Conference USA and provide cover for him and the school should they part.

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